May 2009
K E Brown Electrical switchboards recently achieved an extraordinary 30-year production landmark while meeting the rapidly changing needs of one of the world's largest food service retailers.
We delivered our latest compact and reconfigurable switchboard for the retailer's 800th outlet opening or refurbishment in this country.
KEB's 800th retailers switchboardThe custom-fabricated switchboards - produced in space-saving 1300mm and 1500mm widths - are manufactured in Sydney with innovative world class technology to cater for the needs of a group serving more than 50 million customers a year.
For energy efficiency and space efficiency, they incorporate Schneider Electric's Compact NS range of low voltage circuit breakers feeding Multi 9 DIN Miniature Circuit breakers mounted on a horizontal, European style, mounting chassis that can rapidly adapt to additional functions required by different family restaurants.
The Compact NS circuit breaker technology not only permits fine monitoring of energy consumption and simplified operation and maintenance, but also helps enable the space-saving switchboards to fit readily a retail environment planned for ultimate space and energy efficiency and flexibility.
"The challenge for K E Brown has been to produce a standardised design of board applicable across the whole range of our customer's outlets - but one which can cope with hugely varied operational requirements of a group with individual outlets opening or being refurbished at the rate of more than one a week (up to 70 a year)," said K E Brown Operations Manager Mr Peter Silsby.
"While the boards must conform to a standard design to achieve cost efficiencies of installation, operation and maintenance.
Individual outlets have to be able to quickly add on and monitor the power performance of new services so they can refine pricing and efficiency outcomes accurately - and do this without downtime or disruption.
"The design has to be versatile because the customer's business has changed vastly in nature and scale, with more than 760 outlets here constantly adapting to the changing busy lifestyle of an enormous customer base.
"The switchboards we have evolved over our 30 year relationship must be not only near bulletproof in terms of reliability, but also built to the highest global versatility standards of a company with tens of thousands of outlets worldwide."
